Archive for the 'Murs' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

No offense to the Fab Four, who really are exceptional at emulating you know who, but it’s definitely a slow week in local concert news when they’re the top story.

Then again, these days the group is more perennially popular than your average indie upstart or ’80s forebear, and its latest announcement is something of an O.C. tradition: the impersonators' Thanksgiving weekend show at City National Grove of Anaheim. This year they play on Black Friday, Nov. 29, $30-$37.

Also returning to the venue is R&B star Lyfe Jennings, back in the game after declaring his 2010 album I Still Believe his last – right before serving two years in prison for a 2008 altercation with his children’s mother that led to a police chase, ending with him smashing his car into a tree. He performs Sept. 29, $25-$45. Both shows go on sale Friday, Aug. 23, at noon.

Laura Marling: Having garnered justifiably rapturous raves for her fourth album Once I Was an Eagle, the English singer-songwriter is returning stateside for a few more shows, including an L.A. stop at a most unusual (but potentially perfect) venue, the Cathedral Sanctuary at Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Tickets for the Oct. 21 performance, with Willy Mason opening, are on sale Friday at 10 a.m., $25.

Riling up the crowd with a message: Macklemore in Devore. Photo: David Hall, for the Register

Substance vs. style: that was what it really boiled down to when gauging who were top performers at Saturday's Paid Dues Independent Hip Hop Festival, an offshoot of organizer Guerilla Union's Rock the Bells gathering that was co-created eight years ago by Living Legends rapper Murs.

The event, held as usual beneath the blazing hot sun in San Bernardino County, adopted a familiar formula, with tons of the genre's top-tier old- and new-school acts spread across three stages. That included standout sets from Kendrick Lamar and his Top Dog Entertainment fellowship Black Hippy; upstarts Macklemore & Ryan Lewis; fest vets Tech N9ne, Immortal Technique and Talib Kweli; long-running trio De La Soul; Murs' collaboration with Fresno rapper Fashawn; plus the Grouch and Eligh (also repping Living Legends) and the Hieroglyphics crew's core quartet, Souls of Mischief.

There was one welcome difference: the bash was moved from the unsightly NOS Events Center to the much larger – not to mention grassier, gustier and overall more accommodating – San Manuel Amphitheater in Devore's Glen Helen Regional Park.

That's really saying something given that most artists slated for this year's fest comprised group acts – Dipset, Odd Future (OFWGKTA), Living Legends, Hieroglyphics, Dilated Peoples, Boot Camp Clik and Wu-Tang Clan, among others, all of them ranging from three to a dozen members in some cases.

Throughout the day, however, there were also plenty of worthy solo acts. One of those – female rapper Psalm One, from Chicago – opened the small Monster Energy Stage, reminding the audience throughout her set to support any female MCs they saw later on. In that category, none were stronger than Dessa, who delivered some of the fiercest verses for Minneapolis crew Doomtree, which also featured a particularly forceful performance by Rhymesayers Entertainment mainstay P.O.S.

Yet even before that group's early evening show (they played around 5 p.m.), other longstanding hip-hop collectives proved that major dues were (and are still being) paid.

Sadly, Jerry Leiber isn't the only great songwriter to pass away today. Nick Ashford, who with his wife and musical partner Valerie Simpson penned some of the mightiest classics in the Motown songbook, also died Monday, of complications from throat cancer. He was 69. (Several sources insist he was 70, but he was born May 4, 1942.)

Ashford & Simpson, who were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002, began their career in the mid-'60s, initially gaining notice by crafting hits for Aretha Franklin ("Cry Like a Baby"), the 5th Dimension ("California Soul") and most notably Ray Charles, whose version of their tune "Let's Go Get Stoned" topped the R&B charts in 1966.

That same year Berry Gordy Jr. brought them onto his Motown songwriting staff, where they would soon concoct one enduring anthem after another, many of them duets for Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "You're All I Need to Get By," "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," "Your Precious Love." In all, they wrote and/or produced all but one of the duo's late-'60s singles.

They also crafted hits for Gladys Knight & the Pips, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Ronnie Milsap, Maxine Brown, the Shirelles, the Marvelettes, Teddy Pendergrass, Chaka Khan ("I'm Every Woman" is one of theirs) and, to a much greater extent, Diana Ross & the Supremes. Indeed, they were the principal writers for three of Ross' biggest solo albums of the '70s, including her self-titled debut -- featuring one of her signature songs, "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" -- as well as Surrender (1971) and The Boss (1979). (Ashford, working with Frank Wilson, also produced the 1968 smash "I'm Gonna Make You Love" that united the Supremes with the Temptations.)

“They had magic, and that's what creates those wonderful hits, that magic,” Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire told the Associated Press after learning of Ashford's death. “Without those songs, those artists wouldn't have been able to go to the next level.”

Late last week came word that perpetual eccentric Tori Amos had completed her 12th studio album and would leave her beloved Cornwall (where she's lived and recorded for more than a decade) to embark on a stateside tour starting just after Thanksgiving.

Now her Southern California dates, Dec. 17-18 at the Orpheum Theatre, are about to go on sale -- Saturday, July 30, at 10 a.m., to be exact. Tickets are $48-$63. Given that her coming disc, Night of Hunters (due Sept. 20), is a return to basics -- just her piano plus strings -- methinks these shows will be very scaled-back affairs.

Didn't get tickets to see Bon Iver at the Shrine on Sept. 19? Good news: Justin Vernon and his ensemble have added a second L.A. appearance, Sept. 20 at Gibson Amphitheatre, $39.50, on sale Friday at 10 a.m.

Switching gears, heavy metal supergroup Down -- Phil Anselmo of Pantera plus Pepper Keenan of Corrosion of Conformity, Kirk Windstein and Todd Strange from Crowbar and Jimmy Bower, drummer for Eyehategod -- are headed to O.C. to play Sept. 10 at City National Grove of Anaheim. Tickets, $22.50 in advance, $25 day of show, go on sale Saturday at noon.

Meanwhile, veteran Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen will return to the U.S. for two local shows: Oct. 28 at House of Blues Anaheim, $25, and Oct. 29 at Club Nokia in Los Angeles, $25-$100. Both dates are on sale now.

Last year concert promoter Guerilla Union upped the ante on its consistently successful hip-hop festival Rock the Bells by having their top-tier acts all perform seminal albums in their entirety. In one day rap fans got to hear Midnight Marauders from A Tribe Called Quest, Paid in Full from Rakim, Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded, Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick and Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), all by the original performers with very few absences (Ol' Dirty Bastard is excused).

This year, the four-date touring festival, which kicks off Aug. 20 at San Manuel Amphitheater in Devore, aims to match that feat by leading with a set that many wished had happened last year: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, one of only two hip-hop albums to ever win the Grammy for album of the year, performed in full by its author.

How does the rest of the bill stack up against last year's? No slight against those other staples, but I'll take this year's batch hands down: Mos Def & Talib Kweli once more tackling Black Star (1998), Cypress Hill reviving its second disc, 1993's Black Sunday (granted, another repeat of a recent performance), three representatives from the Wu playing 1995 titles (GZA brandishing Liquid Swords, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah revisiting Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...), Mobb Deep getting hardcore with The Infamous (also '95), and, best of all (apart from maybe Ms. Hill), Nas performing 1994's Illmatic, one of the all-time great hip-hop albums.

But wait, there's more: Oakland's Souls of Mischief will dust off 93 to Infinity, Black Moon will do likewise with its 1993 debut Enta Da Stage and Masta Killa will play all of 2004's No Said Date.

Now Ozzy Osbourne (left, with daughter Kelly at a Fox party in January) also will close out the bash with a headlining turn next Saturday night, Sept. 12, on the main stage during the outdoor portion of the SSMF.

Amazingly, this will mark Ozzy's first performance on the Sunset Strip, solo or otherwise, since 1970, when Black Sabbath played a five-night stand at the Whisky on its first U.S. tour.

As previously announced, Korn and Chris Cornell also top the street-scene conclusion of the three-day festival, along with 40 other acts, including Pepper, Kottonmouth Kings and the Donnas. Two stages will be erected on Sunset Boulevard, which will be closed from Doheny Drive to San Vicente Boulevard. Tickets, $39.50, are on sale.

Otherwise, it's a typically quiet week for new stuff, what with Labor Day coming up ...